After 76ers star Joel Embiid won league MVP, denying Nikola Jokić his third-consecutive award, the Nuggets star believed that voters made the right decision.
“I don’t think about MVPs anymore,” Jokić said on Monday night. “I mean, I think it’s—people are just mean in saying Embiid shouldn’t have won it. I think he should have won it. I think he was playing, if you watch it, extremely, extremely tough basketball through the whole season. … He was really amazing in 82 games or how many games he played.”
Although Jokić was considered the MVP frontrunner for most of the season, Embiid supercharged his game down the stretch as the Sixers powered their way to the No. 3 seed in the East. As for the Nuggets, they clinched the No. 1 seed in the West in early March and cruised down the stretch with nothing left to play for, finishing with an 8–10 record across the final 18 games.
Nuggets coach Michael Malone acknowledged that individual accolades are not what fuels his star big man, but even so, believed that the tone around this year’s MVP conversation may have bothered him.
“You know, this is the first year where I think—I don’t know this for a fact … he never told me this—but in my opinion, I think the negativity around the MVP race I think did get to him,” Malone said. “I can’t blame him. The guy goes out there and does his job every night and he is being criticized.”
While Embiid was outstanding and certainly deserving of the award, voter fatigue and the ramifications of crowning Jokić with his third-straight MVP likely played a factor in the minds of some voters. Jokić would have been the first player to win three straight NBA MVPs since Larry Bird, CBS Sports noted. Michael Jordan and LeBron James, widely considered to be the best basketball players of all time, have never won three straight MVPs.
In the postseason when it counts, Jokić has proven his worth. The Nuggets swept the Lakers in four games to advance to the NBA Finals, while Embiid’s 76ers lost to the Celtics in their East semifinals.
